Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2018 - 38

Feature .01

If you ever consider stealing
a $5,000 Pivot mountain bike, say, or a $20 t-shirt from Chalet
Sports in downtown Bozeman, Montana, a word of caution: Return
the bike from your test ride, and leave the shirt on the display table.
Why? Lifting either isn't worth it. Not only is Montana still hip to its
Old West ethos, Chalet Sports' owner is Jennifer Merkel. She stands
five feet five in her heeled oxfords and she is also soft spoken. But if
you lift something from Chalet without buying it, she will chase you
down the street. I know this because I saw it not minutes after arriving at the store, which is reputedly haunted by an Old West sheriff.
Walking into the brightly lit shop spilling
over with mountain bikes, fat skis, and apparel,
photographer Andrew Kornylak and I encountered a flurry. A thief, it appeared, had stolen
a shirt. Merkel and nine-year employee Jenny
Madsen were in hot pursuit. Merkel's co-manager, Tom Czech, pointed us toward the county
courthouse, and Andrew and I ran on legs still
stiff from our plane rides. A few yards on, we
saw the ladies casing a car. The potential thief,
Merkel said, was in the courthouse, the shirt nowhere in sight. Lucky for him, they decided he
hadn't stolen it, and let it go.
Unofficial Sheriff Merkel turned to me,
smiled sweetly and shook my hand before we
all sauntered back to Chalet Sports. Never in my
15-year history of writing profiles had I learned
so much about a person in such short order. And
I had yet to meet Merkel's parents, who own another store, the Round House Ski and Sports
Center, farther west on Main Street. Over the
next two days, I'd meet the elders, Larry and
Rita Merkel, plus two of Jennifer's siblings,
Ryan and Marinna (Gretchen, a third sister,
lives in Nevada). Together and over the past 45
years, the family has created something unique
to outdoor specialty. It's not a "monopoly" (they
stress), nor a cartel (that's the drug world), but a
tiny consortium of first-rate outdoor gear shops
in the heart of Bozeman. The Round House is a
"destination" shop on what used to be the edge
of town, while Chalet Sports serves locals and
tourists alike in the center of downtown.
Larry and Rita have run the Round House
Sports Center since 1971, and Jennifer Chalet
Sports since 1997. There's a whole lot of his-

38 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ Winter 2018

tory before, during, and after those two years.
The Merkel story is one every shop owner
should know-and not only for how effectively
Jennifer sherrifs.

ARRY AND I GREW UP TOGETHER,
went to high school and college
together, and got married," says
Rita Merkel. Both were born in the late 1940s,
around the same time as the Bridger Bowl Ski
Area. In 1949, the State of Montana purchased
1,200 acres of prime national forest to develop
a ski hill. Several years would pass before the
Bridger today's skiers know would finally open.

However, in his high school years, Larry,
who was a lover of hoops, didn't do much skiing. That changed when he entered college. "At
MSU [Montana State University]," Rita says,
"the first thing you registered for was ski class
one day a week." Larry did, and right away. "It
was the greatest thing I'd ever done," he says.
He skied so hard and so often he'd bang his
shins until they bled," Jennifer adds. (Larry: "It
was Lange Bang. The upper cuff on their boots
was so low back then, when you skied really
hard, it wore a hole in the front of your leg.") He
kept shredding-teaching ski lessons, coaching
the Bridger ski team-and became friends with
a fellow skier/entrepreneur. "We had a vision
that we could do a store that would serve the
needs of the community," Larry says. They acted on their hunch, opening the Round House,
with foam panels and a wood foundation constructed by MSU architecture students, in 1971.
Then, on the heels of that impressive feat,
Sports Chalet went up for sale. It was sold once,
went into bankruptcy, and hit the market again.
In 1977, Larry and Rita bought it. But that story
comes later.
Some people-Larry and Rita-are good at
embodying the motto "baptism by fire." Because
at the same time they opened the Round House,
they started a family. Jennifer came first, visiting the store on the day she came home from the
hospital."It's how it always was," says Marinna.
"You get your braces off, you go to the store.
You have a new boyfriend, you go to the store."
Bozeman High School sits across Main Street

Outdoor Retailer - Winter 2018

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